the constellation of the heart
by explodeywodey
Summary: Stars spin their mortal coils above him and he is stranded again, sitting on a balcony at a hotel. Waiting. Maybe she is waiting for him out there too, this shadowed dream of his. (Originally posted on AO3 under the title "future")


The sky is bright over the balcony, shrouded with mist and sparkling with stars. It feels like the stars are all around, scattered and falling from the great dark glass dome above him. The sky is bright with pinpricks of light that seem to cascade down in constant motion. The eerie waterfall of light is familiar, but he can't put his thumb on where from.

He thought he was waiting for someone, but he can't tell for sure now. He holds a vague recollection of having plans, of having something to do and somewhere to go, but they've faded now, lost in this dreamlike haze.

With a trembling hand, he reaches out to grasp at a star, only to close on empty air. Around him, the moving lights seem to shy away from his touch, warping outward and continuing their movement.

"So you did wait," a voice says quietly, and he cranes his neck, looking for the speaker.

Ah, of course. It's her. He smiles, reaching up a hand to her, reaching out to touch her smiling face and hold her close.

But she, for her part, bursts into rose petals, trailing up from his hands and out of his grasp; her features spiraling up out of sight and memory.

"You have to wait again," her voice whispers, and he suddenly can no longer remember her.

_I think I sleep; I think I dream._

_Or maybe you are real._

Stars spin their mortal coils above him and he is stranded again, sitting on a balcony at a hotel. Waiting. Maybe she is waiting for him out there too, this shadowed dream of his.

From behind him comes the susurrous sound of fabric shifting. "You always wait, you know," she whispers, her fingers touching the back of his neck gently. Reverently. She settles her hands onto his shoulders, kneading gently. "Always. And I do too―weeks on end, months, years, confined in a computer so far away." Her nails dig into the back of his neck ever so slightly, dragging from his hairline down along his cervical vertebrae. "Everybody lives, some days. It's just that my days are over now."

River bloody Song. He thought she'd stop haunting him eventually, that one time he managed to cheat death for somebody's sake. There is no such luck for him; River Song stalks his dreams, now, with eyes green and deep like the sea and a horrible rictus plastered firmly on her face.

He cringes at the feel of nails scraping against his skin as they venture farther around his neck, caressing his adam's apple with sharp tips.

"Do you know how it feels, I wonder? Eternity, yes; you know that because you are that, but imagine a guarantee of infinity. I can never die, Doctor, and that's wonderful until you're old and tired in a young body and remembering that you're going to live dead for a lot longer than you lived alive."

He stares out at the night as her fingers ghost along his chest, lingering on the ridges thrown up by his collarbones. This isn't something he can deal with, or even something he knows how to deal with; he only knows her as Professor River Song: Dead in the Library, and Doctor River Song: _Spoilers_, not as…whatever she is to him someday in the future.

(He likes to hope that she's his lover, likes to fancy that they travel together and he gets to show her all the happiness he couldn't bring her when he met her in the library. If they must live in reverse, he thinks he'll spend the rest of time making up to her in love what she hasn't gotten from him yet.)

"Why won't you look at me?" she whispers, her voice horrible and weak and broken where it once was strong and lively. He hears a hiccup, like the beginning of a sob, and turns to her, ready to hold her.

He turns to her, and she is gone like she never existed.

_I think I sleep; I think I dream._

_I think I fall in love with you again._

Some nights alone―never quite, as Amelia and Rory are always with him, just not the sort of with-with that he needs at four in the morning when his dreams are haunted by a woman he's only beginning to know―he sees her. She smirks at him as she straddles him, and he remembers the face that he sometimes tries to forget, warm and lovely and wreathed in brilliant hair.

They move slowly, like they are trying to memorise each other, her hands braced on his chest as he grips her by the hips. The dim light catches in her hair and reflects, shining from her like starlight in his bedroom. Her eyes glint in the bleak light, pupils so dilated that the green is near invisible.

(He tries to tell himself that he's not getting used to this, that she is dead and this is ridiculous, but his subconscious takes no notice.)

"Oh, sweetie," she moans, her back arching forward, and for the first time in his life he can't think of anything to say. His brain is light and floating and full of the universe turning in random, brilliant disorder. His mind is full of starlight, soft and sweet and resonant.

And they've only just met.

_I sleep and dream; I know I sleep._

_I think I know you better than before._

Some nights he dreams of them differently, a violent, angry coupling laced with fingernails and teeth and sharp, loving whispers he can barely hear. Her hands scrabble for purchase on his back, nails knocking along his vertebrae as her body cleaves tight to his. With a hiss, she bites down on his clavicle and through the dreaming haze he can feel the heat of her breath and the sting of her teeth. He palms her breasts and smiles grimly as she gasps, arching into his touch.

She grinds against him almost violently as their teeth and skin clash. A bitter laugh echoes through the room, and River's lips part.

"Why won't you _look at me_," she hisses. Her voice isn't a forlorn whisper this time, but an accusation, ruined only slightly by the whimper that follows it.

He tries to think of something to say as their pace increases but comes up with nothing, electing instead to watch dumbly as she presses her hand between them, rubbing against herself as she sighs, whimpers; she moans aloud as she comes, her inner muscles clenching tight around him.

Every little death of hers brings her closer to the final one, and he can't help but enjoy her while he can.

_Sometimes I sleep and wake with the taste of you on my lips.  
_

It's a certain type of woman, he realises, that is willing to ruin something impossibly ancient to get his attention. Particularly an archaeologist. It takes another woman entirely to rip the universe apart for him, only to bring it slamming back together when he gives her cause to. He gets both, somehow, and then some. The bespoke psychopath tangles with the archaeologist, mixes with the insurmountable flirt and mingles with the time-travelling gunwoman, molds itself by human-plus and gradually becomes the Doctor Song; in his bed, they commingle into River Song, _wife_.

In their room in the TARDIS, she pulls his bowtie undone with her teeth and smiles entirely unapologetically.

_Wife_, he calls her, and she smiles down at him. He wouldn't have figured her for the settling down, marrying type (and really, 'wife' is just as much a meaningless moniker as 'doctor'; the title may be hers, but there's no extent to which it binds her to duty), but here she is. Here they are.

_Husband_, she calls him as she unbuttons his shirt, sending pleasurable shudders up his spine.

This is them as one, this thing they've been building up to; two bodies moving as one, the stuff of tales and dreams and even _reality_, now.

He gets one more miracle here; he gets River Song, and spoilers, and the universe only half as empty and twice as full. He wonders what's left to come as the threads of time twist in his head, and he sees possibilities beyond what he'd dared to dream of before. They may be finite, but they're unlimited by time, and in this newly-made old universe, anything can happen.

Thoughts jumble in his head and he can feel her arms wrapped around him and her lips on his, a dreaming of companions future and past and a millennium of hats left to lose.

A sigh sounds in his ear, content and happy; River Song drifts off to sleep, her legs tangled in his own.

Time thrums slowly around them, pulsing to the beat of four hearts. A future springs before him, waiting to be remembered.


End file.
